Sunday, 7 October 2007, David Gerard wrote:
You're behaving as if you have a right to
someone's attention.
That's not what I'm saying. I have, however, had people complain because
I didn't notice messages to this effect on their user page (you'll
notice the template is used very frequently on user pages or even
images rather than on user talk pages) or when I didn't notice it on
their user talk page (often because I was using UserMessages.js) or
because I chose not to cater to the demand/request to go off-site.
But this isn't about me or my rights. I simply happen to know what a
Commons janitor's workflow is like, and I know we need that workflow to
be as smooth as possible to preserve the integrity and organisation of
Commons so that it can be of as much use to other Wikimedia projects
and society as possible. Occasionally visiting uploaders enabling
e-mail notifications so that their works aren't deleted when they
forget to add the necessary legal information is a step in that
direction. Slowing janitors down in their process of identifying such
works is a step away from it.
Commons is a service project for other wikis. They
work on those
wikis - writing those "encyclopedia article" things, as previously
noted (even if you decide it's deeply offensive and sarcastic to even
mention it)
I consider informing someone with 16,000 Wikipedia edits that there's
such a thing as "encyclopedia articles" pretty unnecessary, yes.
- and upload pictures here. If you're trying to
righteously drive them away from wanting to even bother with commons,
which is what your attitude here comes across as, then you are doing
both Commons and the projects it was created to serve a great
disservice.
Personally I think "don't use Commons to discuss Commons matters" is the
attitude more aimed at driving people away from Commons, rather
than "enable notifications so that you know what's happening to your
work at Commons".
I've updated the usage section of the template to recommend Enotif
instead. I won't mess with the deterring wording of the actual template
(as much as I disagree with it), because I don't want to distort the
intended statement of those who use the template.
--
Alex Nordstrom
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LX
Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to commons-l.